EBOC 2023

I had the pleasure to teach a class on East Bay Origami Convention (EBOC) 2023. It was a nice experience so I am sharing it here.

Pre-Convention

The event was held on 19th March. I got the news from Origami Dan just a week before that. It was to be hosted in UC Berkeley, which is somewhat close to where I live. Even though I have never been there and there's not much information on who would be there, I thought why not? It's only $8, close by, and no need to spend the night.

There's an option to teach and exhibit your fold. Given the smaller scale of the convention, I think they might be happy if someone apply for those. So I submitted my application for teaching my snail. At the end of the form, they said that they will let me know if I got chosen to teach by 5th May. Apparently my application was a week late so I don't have much expectation to get a reply. Similar story for exhibit application.

Few days later, I got acceptance email. I will be teaching it in the afternoon slot, 15.00 - 16.00. However no answer on the exhibition application.

Convention Day

I still have no idea what to expect on this convention so I prepared everything with "just in case" mindset. Is my exhibition application accepted? Doesn't matter, just bring my stuff. Will there be papers or books sold there? Doesn't matter, just bring paper tube. Is mask mandatory? Doesn't matter, just bring mask!

I took public transport from San Jose to Berkeley, which is not bad. It took 2 hours to get there with bus and train ride. During the train ride, I practiced folding my snail. One aspect of teaching that some teachers overlooked is narrating the fold, like "valley fold at the corner, and align the left edge with the edge behind". We must not say "fold this, and align this, like this" because the attendee has to look at you every time "this" is mentioned. They are far away, and our hand might get in the way, or the slight rotation on how we hold the model might confuse them. Confused people will slow down the class' pace. So I made sure to practice the narration well.

San Jose flea market, reminds me of train station back in my hometown.

Arriving in Berkeley at 10.20, the first thing I do is to get "lunch". The convention's lunch schedule is 14.00 - 15.00 which is too late for me. So I went to Gypsy's Italian restaurant to get big plate of pasta based on my friend's recommendation.

Carb bomb that kept me from being hungry even after 10 hours.

Finally I reached the venue a little past 11.00. The first class with Bernie Peyton has started so I just spend my time familiarizing with the space. There are 4 round tables each fitting around 10 people, and the classes happen on those tables. There are 2 parallel classes at any time. Unfortunately nobody is selling paper or books. I don't recognize anyone there so it's time to make some friends. Actually, there is someone from Origami Dan who will teach his model at 12.00, I just don't know how he looks like.

I met the committee and to my delight, they were expecting my models for the exhibition. So it was accepted but I just don't know about it. There are not many items in the exhibition, but some models made by the Cal Origami members are interesting. Particularly the crab. I was killing time until the next class by chatting with others.

Humanoid model, one of the few complex models in this exhibit.

Cal Origami's models.

Miferg's models.

My models.

Bradley Tompkins' boxes.

At 12.00, I went to attend class by Miferg from Origami Dan (not his real name). However I got confused and ended up in Chris Randall's bearded dragon class. It is a boxpleated model and as expected, quite challenging to be taught in convention. The problem with boxpleating is the precreasing took too much time. Sure the collapse is easy but during convention, teacher can't just say "collapse this" and it has to go through some sequences. The class ends at 13.00 and we were midway collapsing. Luckily there is a crease pattern.

Next class is pumpkin by Albert Tran. It is an interesting non-axial design. The creases are lined up nicely and efficiently.

Sorry for the mushed right side, it barely survived the ride back home.

There was 1 hour break before the next class, and I would be teaching at that time. I have already had my lunch so I went out just for coffee. There is SoDoI coffee shop which has high rating so I gave it a try. It's good, but not the best one that I have ever had. The caffeine boost might help though. Drinking coffee turns out to be a bad choice since it is diuretic (increases production of urine) and I am holding pee along half of my train ride.

I finally met Miferg and we have a chat. There are young designers that I haven't met yet and we talked about bunch of stuff, mainly paper. I brought some tiny samples of double tissue to prepare for this conversation.

One funny thing happened when I met with one of the attendees' parent:

Him: "My son told me there's someone famous here"

Me: "Who?"

Him: "He is the one who made the bird and the goat"

Me: "Which bird, the red and black one?"

Him: "Yes"

Me: "Well that's... me"

Him: "I know, my son told me"

I laughed and I was happy that someone recognizes my work, but I certainly don't think I am famous. It's also nice to see parent being supportive of their child's hobby.

My class started few minutes past 15.00. It went slower than I would expect as the attendee's skill level has a large gap. I can see the boredom of the faster folks and frustration of the slower folks at the same time. I skipped some steps on the shell's coil and rushed it so it finished within an hour. It's crazy how a model that I can slowly fold in 10 minutes ended up taking 60 minutes to be taught. Nevertheless, I was delighted to see the attendee's happy face near the end of the steps when the snail's shape started to emerge. I suppose it is the joy of origami teacher that we can't get when teaching online through video call.

Near the end of my class, someone wearing bright colored costume came in. I instantly recognized him and said "hi... Jeremy Shafer?". He extended his arm for a handshake. Lol, he is very chill and cool. The committee announced that there will be 3 parallel class next, with the extra one being Jeremy Shafer "teaching whatever he wants".

In case you are not familiar, Jeremy Shafer is experienced origami artist. He is creative in action origami or other unconventional aspect of origami. He also competed with Satoshi Kamiya on TV Champion in one of the episodes. The choice is clear to me, I have to attend his class.

He ended up teaching various models, throwing jokes along the class, and left at 17.00 sharp like a boss.

Various things he taught: flower (incomplete), interesting ball of spikes, and light saber (not cigarette).

Classes were done at 17.00. There are 2 more hours left for the convention and the next event is variety of activity such as folding from huge paper and "rapid folding" (group of people take turns in folding a paper without talking). I hanged out there until around 17.30, then say my thanks to the committee and left. Bought a buritto along the way to the train station and went home.

It was a nice experience to meet other origami folders and spending time together. 10/10 will come again if I have the opportunity.